


practice

by altilis



Series: careful, ren. [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 02:45:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5480348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altilis/pseuds/altilis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo is always training to be better (like learning to stop blaster shots), and Hux is always trying to manage one of the largest flagships in the galaxy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	practice

“Do you ever let it rest?” Hux asks from the bed.

From the desk, Kylo looks over; the small blaster pistol continues to spin slowly in the air in front of him, occasionally flashing the mouth of the barrel in Hux’s direction. “No, I don’t,” Kylo tells him, his voice quiet and mirthless. “I can’t.”

When Kylo turns his attention back to the pistol, Hux continues to watch Kylo, sitting in his chair and bathed in the ambient light of the planet the destroyer has been orbiting for days – another vague order from Snoke, another fruitless search, another story of Kylo slicing up a briefing room to near destruction. But now Hux can see the shadow of a new bruise on Kylo’s neck, the deep flush from too-hard grips at his shoulders; he smirks to himself, until he shifts and feels the ache in his thighs and the raw ache…elsewhere. Perhaps he’ll stay in bed until morning.

“What are you trying this time?” Hux continues, propping up on his elbow (slowly). “Taking it apart?”

“No.” Kylo doesn’t look at him; the pistol keeps spinning. “Draining its power.”

“Why not simply destroy it?”

“Be quiet.” Already losing his patience. Hux isn’t the only one tired from the evening, it seems.

“Am I distracting you?” Hux sits up. “Perhaps I would like to work through the night, too; get out of my chair and play with your little powers in the dining room, I’d like to finish writing my – ”

He hears the crush of metal-on-metal and the next moment Kylo tackles him back onto the bed, pinning his wrists back as he kneels over Hux, scowling and snarling: “I won’t have you interrupting my training.”

His heart thunders in his chest, and he might get new bruises on his wrist in the morning, but Hux still smirks, looking up at Kylo flushed with anger. “But you’re already back in bed,” Hux points out, and he holds back a chuckle as Kylo realizes it, glancing aside to the rumpled sheets, the haphazardly-thrown pillows at the headboard. “So either stop and rest, Ren, or get out of my quarters.”

Ren pulls back, releasing Hux’s wrists and moving off of him, sitting up. “You were sleeping when I started.”

“I don’t care,” Hux says, pushing himself up, then rubbing his wrists. “I won’t have you destroy these rooms, too.”

“I wouldn’t–”

Hux reaches out to grab Kylo by the back of the head and jerk him closer, staring into his dark eyes. “You ungrateful fool,” Hux whispers, “I have to replace a room every time we find another dead-end in your futile treasure hunt. That’s seven this month.”

“Give me better teams!”

“The teams are fine. Stop being a child.”

Hux isn’t sure if he feels Kylo’s power, or his anger, but he can anticipate it in the beginnings of a scowl on Kylo’s face, so he kisses him: an immediate distraction, a fight he can win against Kylo. The kiss drags as long as Hux wants it until Kylo finally squirms back, breathless, pushing Hux back by the shoulder, but now he’s looking at Hux like something other than a nuisance, his eyes are wandering down Hux’s chest and even lower.

So much for training, Hux thinks, before he’s shoved back against the pillows, unyielding strength holding his arms down while Kylo nips at his neck, at his shoulder, trails lower over his chest. Perhaps they’ll both stay in bed until morning.

\--

Phasma tells him during a debriefing that Kylo Ren is has been keeping her gamma cycle troops out of one of the practice rooms. Hux tells her to resolve it herself; Phasma tells him to do his job, that whether he likes it or not, dealing with Ren is as much his duty as it is dealing with Snoke: nobody else will do it.

He goes to the practice hall himself after his normal schedule of meetings and communiques are done. The door doesn't open to his command. He raises his fist and bangs twice on the metal. "REN," he barks at the door, "OPEN THIS DOOR."

Nothing happens. He hears nothing from the other side of the blast door, or from the rest of the corridor; any troopers lingering around here would have made themselves scarce at his voice. Hux raises his hand to bang on the door again when it hisses and slides open, and Kylo Ren stands less than an arm's length in front of him, at rest, wearing his mask. 

"What do you want?" Kylo asks, his voice flat, the mask obscuring the softer notes in his voice for the deep, mechanical rumble he prefers to use with everyone else on the ship. (Hux prefers it, too, sometimes.)

"You can't have this room for an entire cycle," Hux says, glancing over Kylo's shoulder. A droid torso - no head, no legs - sits on a large box, holding a blaster rifle towards the far end of the room. Wires hang out the back panel, haphazardly drawn out to connect to another device that looks like half of a small probe droid laid bare. "What are you doing in here? Where did you get those droids?"

"That is none of your concern. Tell the captain that there are many other rooms she can use if she would divide her squadron."

"No, Ren; your experiments do not justify your use of this room over standard pro--"

"My experiments?" Kylo echoes, his voice still calm. He says nothing more, but neither does Hux. They stare at each other in silence for what feels like a minute, perhaps ten, before Kylo turns away, the softest chuckle heard through the mask, and he steps towards the droids. "Give me five days, General, and the Supreme Leader will thank you."

"I'll give you no such thing without a reason first."

Kylo pauses. "General," he tries, again, but the anger is already there in his voice: Hux knows this is where limbs are severed and panels are destroyed, but he has to hold firm.

"I will not repeat myself. If you provide me no reason -- " Kylo rounds on him, walks towards him in a swirl of rage and power, and Hux keeps talking, "then evacuate this room, bring your robots and other junk--"

He stops because Kylo's hand is around his throat, but something else is squeezing his throat, pinching his lungs. "Five days, and I will give you your reason. Remember that this ship is only partially yours, Hux, and if my knights see fit to use all of these rooms, we shall, whenever we like." Kylo says, then releases him, pushes him back. 

Hux coughs, doubling over, and only glances up when he hears the heavy door slam shut, Kylo safe and secure on the other side.

\--

Phasma doesn't like the allowance, but in their private meeting in his office, Hux can see the way she glances at the bruise on his neck, and she doesn't push him further.

\--

Five days. He bangs twice on the door into the practice hall. The door opens immediately, now. The droid torso and the accessory unit lie in a heap against the wall; on the box rests a single blaster. Kylo Ren stands down range, between the gunning positions and the targets on the far end, masked but unarmed.

"Pick up the blaster," he calls, that deep voice echoing off the walls and high ceilings. "Fire a bolt at me."

Hux stares at him, then looks at the rifle on the box, slowly stepping towards it. "Are you certain?" He'll only ask once.

"Yes, of course." But Kylo's voice wavers slightly. But there is something he wants to demonstrate here, or this is an elaborate scheme to assassinate him. He never enjoys weapons he hasn't inspected himself.

So he pulls out the small pistol from his belt - a new one, since last week - and fires a bolt at Kylo instead, and hopes.

The blast resonates briefly in the hall, or maybe it's in his own mind, as he sees the red bolt suspended in mid-air as if time has frozen around it. Hux lowers his arm, blinking twice as if to reset this illusion, and the only other thing he notices is that Kylo has both arms outstretched, as if to catch it. 

Hux walks towards him, eyes on the bolt as it grows brighter in his view, stretched out over the reflective black floor like a comet across the sky. When he gets closer he hears it, the chaotic rustle of light against light, the same noise he hears from Kylo's saber on the rare occasion he's had to see it. And then he sees how disastrous this could have been: the head of the stretched bolt lies mere inches from Kylo's outstretched fingertips; another few milliseconds and it would have struck him. 

Slowly, Kylo lowers his arms and steps outside of the bolt's trajectory, standing across it from Hux. The red glow lights his mask, casting deep shadows in the nicks and dents of the metal, making him look more weathered than usual - hardened. 

"Well?" Kylo starts, arms wide as he gestures to the bolt, "What do you think?"

Hux looks down again at the roiling energy of the bolt. "You can do this with the rifle's bolts, too?"

"I can."

"Anything stronger?"

"I haven't tried."

"Perhaps you should."

Kylo drops his arms slowly to his side. The bolt jumps and blasts the far wall, hitting the target with a dull thud and a faint singe. He turns his back to Hux and starts walking towards the entrance, stalking in the way that he does when he hasn't quite got his way.

"Ren," Hux calls to his back.

"What?" Kylo doesn't stop.

"I can give you another seven days." This does make Kylo stop. Hux takes his time to catch up with him, and Kylo watches as he comes up, the narrow slit in the mask following Hux as he moves to stand in front of Kylo. "Try this trick with the stronger cannons we have," he says, "because those will kill, even if they strike you. And we wouldn't want that, would we, Ren?"

"No." Curt and flat again. "Leave me."

\--

Seventeen days of long, empty nights, and the door to Hux's bedroom opens without his command. He wakes only quick enough to see Kylo drop his helmet by the threshold, and the rest is a tangled mess of anger, passion, exhilaration, that dials down to a low, long simmer: Kylo has so much energy, too much energy, and his hands never stop moving over Hux's body, sometimes hurting and sometimes pleasuring - or both - but always keeping Hux on edge.

"I did it, I did all of it," Kylo breathes against the back of his neck as his hand sweeps down Hux's stomach, then twists long strokes over his cock. Hux cants his hips into Kylo's firm grip, hoping that, at the least, the external doors are closed. "The cannons, all of our blasters, I can do it - "

"I know," he huffs, head tilted back against Kylo's shoulder, nails scratching red marks against Kylo's thighs on either side of him. "We'll tell Snoke, he'll be--pleased--" It's hard to think, everything is so hot, Kylo's teeth are scraping against his neck. 

"And you?" Kylo whispers. "Are you pleased?" 

"Oh, yes," a smile plays on Hux's lips, "you may yet live long enough to prove your worth to the First Order." Kylo sinks his teeth into a soft spot on Hux's neck, still a little sore from the bruising grip, but Hux laughs, reaching back and curling his fingers in Kylo's dark hair.

\--

He wakes a little earlier than his usual schedule--a secondary habit whenever Kylo visits, in case anything went awry. Hux rolls over, and he sees Kylo sitting up against the headboard, staring at him.

"What's the matter?" Hux asks, less commanding then he intends, his voice still thick with sleep.

"Nothing." Kylo's gaze shifts to the window, the starry scene broken only by a distant moon. 

Hux pushes himself up, moves over Kylo - with a shove, a purposeful touch - to get out of bed, and as he walks to the dresser he can feel Kylo's gaze on his back. "No training this morning?" he asks as he pulls undergarments from the drawers.

"I already did." The soft rustle of the bedsheets. "I saw your dreams."

Hux pauses, his gaze caught for some reason on the lip of the dresser, before he turns and looks over at Kylo, now sitting up with his feet over the edge of the bed. "And?" He doesn't usually have vivid dreams: maybe some of his father, maybe of minutiae he couldn't address in his waking life, but occasionally he dreams of drowning in a thick, hot, oily blackness, pressing in on him from all sides.

Kylo shrugs and stands. Discarded clothes gather themselves off the floor, trousers leap up to meet his waiting hand, and not for the first time Hux feels the envy of the convenience of Kylo's power, if not his strength. "Dreams are not part of my training," he says as the cloak wraps itself around his shoulders. "And the rest of your mind I already know."

That earns a scoff from Hux. "Do I bore you, then?"

"No." Kylo grabs his helmet off the floor, smooths back his hair with one gloved hand, and slides it on with a hiss. He looks over at Hux, who meets the gaze of that thin, dark slit. "I like to know that I'm not sleeping next to a traitor, General, that's all."

"I will accept that as a compliment."

"As it was intended." And Kylo leaves: Hux hears his footsteps on the floor towards the outer hall and the hiss of doors opening and closing, all the while standing there holding a pair of underwear as a moon transits across the window.


End file.
